Bwin to Enter Social Gaming Market

Bwin.party, one of the larges casino games companies in the world this week announced their intentions to enter the social gaming market. Bwin.party is the operator of top rated online casino games and no deposit casino sites for poker, sports betting, casino and bingo.

The casino games online operator plans to make an investment of $50 million in an effort to create a new social games studio called ‘Win’.

The company has already begun the initial planning phase by putting together a development team, launching a variety of social gaming apps and purchasing numerous assets from Velasco Services Inc. and Orneon Limited to increase its visibility.

Bwin has expressed its confidence in their ability to leverage their position and experience within the casino games online industry as well as their vast collection of original gaming content. The company is aiming to achieve a top position in the social gaming market within the next couple of years.

Jim Ryan and Norbert Teufelberger, the Co-CEOs of bwin.party issued a statement that read, “We have chosen a ‘build and partner’ strategy, one that provides us with both the resources and additional management expertise to execute our planned extension into social gaming – an exciting and fast growing area of digital entertainment that is the latest addition to our business strategy. We are focused on building a meaningful stand-alone enterprise that will operate outside our core real money gaming business but which will benefit from the Group’s significant resources and assets.”

They concluded by saying, “Our investment will enable us to launch Win, our dedicated social gaming studio with its own development center that will increase our speed to market both for social as well as mobile games. Intent on securing a meaningful position in the marketplace, we expect a €5-€10m impact to Clean EBITDA in 2012 and 2013. However, we are excited by the potential of this new market and believe we can deliver attractive returns in the medium term through relatively modest investment, funded from operating cash flow over the next 18 months.”